About a year ago, we showcased a music video from a YouTube channel called CrazyGroupTrio, who did covers and remixes of music from video games. One album the artist has done is Temples of Ocarina, featuring songs from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Considering one of the games we’ve been streaming lately is Ocarina of Time, we thought we’d celebrate again how wonderful the soundtrack — and the plethora of covers there are — is. This particular song is for the Forgotten Wind Temple, a temple in the game that seems to have been cut out of or merged with the Forest Temple in the final version of the game. We hope you enjoy it!

It’s no secret that my favorite kind of characters in video games, especially RPGs, are those that focus on speed and stealth. When Rachel and I played our first Dungeons & Dragons sessions with some friends, I was immediately drawn to the pre-made rogue character and had a grand old time rolling the dice to see what kind of loot I could lift from NPCs. We’ve made our own characters since then and there were several other classes I wanted to try.

Ranger

Ranger is actually the class that I went with when we all began creating our own characters. I found the idea of having proficiency in animal handling and the possibility of having an animal companion down the line to be wonderful motivators. Bow and arrows have always been a fun weapon in video games to me as well, so to translate that into a Dungeons & Dragons character was another good point.

Cleric

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been one to play any kind of healing character. I’d rather be a character who is on the front lines or able to sneak up and stab the enemies. Yet, the idea of being a cranky cleric has crossed my mind more than once. Perhaps one who is quite aware that they are the ones who decides who lives and who dies when it comes to healing.

Paladin

Whenever I play video games, it’s to be the hero, to help save the world. The paladin class sounds the closest to the ideal “hero” archetype, with strong attacks and being able to heal as well.

Bard

The power of music is amazing, and bards are there to make sure you don’t forget it. One of our friends plays bard characters in our campaigns, and she enjoys belting out songs while performing her characters’ actions. My favorite was when her character was being a distraction for some guards while the rest of us almost got our asses kicked by monsters in another room.

What are your favorite classes from Dungeons & Dragons? Let me know in the comments below! If you liked this post, please share it around.

As you all know, I love collecting Pokemon cards. When the cards for Detective Pikachu came out, I was so excited. They even came out with an exclusive Detective Pikachu card if you saw the movie in theaters on opening weekend – which was the main reason I forced myself to go to the movies. However, as much as I enjoy the Detective Pikachu cards, something makes me wonder if they’re worth it.

Pokemon cards come in various ways. You can get booster packs, elite trainer boxes, oversized card sets, pin sets, tins, and more. The Detective Pikachu cards, however, come a little differently. I assume this is because there are only 18 main cards in the set (26 total, a few cards are “secret”).

Detective Pikachu cards can come in a collectible lunch box or “case files.” Two have oversized cards with booster packs and two just have booster packs.

I think it’s a pretty standard thing that “booster packs” are packs of ten cards. This goes for any sort of trading card, not just Pokemon. I could be wrong about that, but for Pokemon, booster packs always have ten cards. Because of this, the booster packs for Detective Pikachu seem to be a bit misleading.

The booster packs in the Detective Pikachu packs only contain four cards. That’s not even half of what a normal booster pack contains. So, when I picked out the $10 case file that contained three booster packs, a Detective Pikachu card, and a coin, I was impressed at the packaging. I thought they changed it for Detective Pikachu. When I held it, it felt awfully thin. Then, when I opened it, instead of a total of 31 cards, I had 13 cards.

Now, other Pokemon cards that come with three booster packs, a special card, and a coin are typically about $13 (on the Pokemon Center at least). This means that you’re getting 31 cards plus a coin for $13 but for Detective Pikachu, you’re getting 13 cards and a coin for $10. In order words, you can get 18 extra cards for $3, though none will be Detective Pikachu.

There are, of course, other Detective Pikachu packs that are more than $10 because they contain an oversized card plus an actual 10-card booster pack along with two 4-card Detective Pikachu booster packs. So, you have to do some math and see what’s worth it and what isn’t.

I think they did this because there aren’t many cards in the Detective Pikachu series, which boggles my mind because they stated 151 Pokemon (no more, no less) made an appearance in the movie. So, at the very least, I feel like the Detective Pikachu card series should have at least 151 cards.

But I’m getting off topic.

Am I going to continue buying the Detective Pikachu series? Of course. Do I think it’s worth the money for so little cards? I’m not sure – I’m not good at math.

I was initially shocked though because they use the term “booster pack” and when I think of a booster pack, I think I’m getting 10 cards. I was surprised to see they only put four cards inside and call it a booster pack. I think, at the very least, they should have come up with a different term for it or just put ten cards in the packs. As I said, I think it’s because there are only 26 total cards for the series, but… it’s a little misleading and maybe even a little false advertising, especially when people, like me, who hear the words “booster pack” assume they’ll get 10 cards.

Or, maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you gotten Detective Pikachu cards yet? Let me know in the comments below! If you like this post, please share it around.

Super Mario Maker 2 is coming out at the end of next month! We enjoyed the original Super Mario Maker on the Wii U and the direct from last week showed off some great new features for the sequel.

We didn’t play too much of the first Super Mario Maker game. I think I enjoyed it more than Kris did, but when we watched the Direct of this upcoming sequel, we both were impressed and are excited to play the game.

While the idea of a story mode sounds a little silly with a game that’s so focused on creativity, I think I’m rather excited for it. I think it’s only single-player, but the idea of having being taught the different tools and aspects of the game through a “story” is great. With all the other new features, I feel that the story mode will help people feel less overwhelmed at all the options in the main mode.

The story mode definitely seems odd, but I love the idea of it. I’m eager to play a Mario game from Nintendo that’s harder than the typical Mario platformer – even though it’s the same tools and elements. They’ve also added a lot more new tools as well, which I’m excited about. Although, that just means the levels people create are going to be that much crazier! But that makes it more fun.

Some of the new tools are the snake blocks, auto-scroll settings, on/off switches, and even Cat Mario to go along with the other Super Mario 3D World inspired content. Not only that, the direct showed Super Mario 3D World in a section of the level aesthetics that had plenty of room for other games… I wonder if they’re going to add any other games that your levels can be based upon as DLC or something?

I would love to see Paper Mario levels. That would be awesome. I’m most excited for the co-op part of the game though. I can’t wait for the two of us to create levels together and even go through some of the levels together as well. It will most likely be way harder, but it would be so much fun.

It will be fantastic for us to play together like that, especially with all the latest platform Mario games being up to four-player co-op. I think the multiplayer in Super Mario Maker 2 makes perfect sense. We’re going to be ridiculous trying to create levels together, probably even playing through them, but it’ll be fun! Not only that, it sounds like the online play will be great as well! I’m certainly looking forward to online multiplayer.

Online multiplayer is definitely another plus. I’m happy the game is coming out at the end of June. I’m eager to get my hands on a copy!

Are you excited for Super Mario Maker 2 to come out? Let us know about them in the comments below! If you like this post, please share it around.

While there aren’t enough hours in the day and there’s always something that needs to get done – work, cleaning, socializing, what have you – there are definitely some games I would love to sit and play all day long.

Paper Mario

Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64, my all-time favorite game. This is a game I could sit down and play for hours on end. The love the overall aesthetics, especially the music. I could hum along with that music any time in any situation. It just makes me happy. Paper Mario, unfortunately, does have an end to it though. I’ve played it so many times that I practically know the game by heart. The last time I played it took me about 24 hours to get through the main story. If I could do that in one sitting, I totally would.

Pokemon

I feel like I don’t really need to explain this one. The main story doesn’t typically take too long, but the collecting? Oh, yeah. I need to catch ’em all and it’s so easy for me to get sucked into the Pokemon world and play for hours at a time. I remember, when X and Y came out, I beat the main story in two days. I got the game for Christmas and spent Christmas evening and the following day playing all day long.

The Sims

Time in The Sims goes by super fast. I feel like one hour in The Sims is about a minute – maybe two – in real time. It’s so easy to spend a lifetime in The Sims and know you’re not wasting too much time in real life… until you look at a real clock and realize the sun had set already. If I could spend a day or two just living as my sim, I totally would.

Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing is a tricky game to play all day long. With its real-time mechanics, the shops have an open and closing time and the villagers do sleep. So, there’s only so much I can do in a day, but if I could, I would play that all day long as well.

What are some of your favorite games to binge play? Let me know in the comments below! If you like this post, please share it around.

Going down Memory Lane again this week with another Monday Memories. This time, it’s about an old game that has helped shaped my being even through today.

If you really know me, you’d know my loves are chocolate, animals, video games, and writing. It was actually video games — Legend of Zelda, to be exact — that inspired me to start writing. I still have my original Legend of Zelda fanfiction notebooks tucked away. They exist solely to prove to myself how much I’ve improved in writing over the years.

Yet, I recently remembered another game that had prompted my love of writing even before those old fanfictions became a thing. Way back in 1994, a game called Storybook Weaver was published for Windows and Mac computers. This game allowed you to create a story with pictures. The pre-made backgrounds and characters were available for the top half of the “page,” while the bottom half of the page was space for you to type your enticing tale.

My stories tended to be about three sisters who, of course, were based off of my sisters and myself. Our old dog Casey, an English springer spaniel, also tended to have starring roles in these stories. There were a plethora of sprites available to represent us all, including seasonal sprites in case you needed to have a snowy scene in your story.

Pretty sure part of my favorite aspect of the game was just imagining the pictures, creating my dream bedroom with the sprites while imagining a story to go along with it. Thinking on it, Storybook Weaver may have also been partly responsible for me dipping my toes into drawing.

Nowadays, my love of writing and video games are tied into this blog, but my writing also shines through my stuffed physical notebooks and digital documents folders. I have a handful of first drafts of novels complete and I’m focusing on actually getting better at editing and rewriting my stories to, hopefully, publish them — either online or, perhaps, in a more traditional sense — one day.

Never would have thought a little educational game from the 90s would have helped foster creativity in my life.

What game from your childhood has directly influenced you today? Let me know in the comments below! If you liked this post, please share it around.

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With a couple of Dungeons & Dragons sessions under our belts, our little newbie group decided to try out a longer campaign with original characters rather than the pre-made characters from the starter kit. We did well enough creating our own characters, although their backstories aren’t much yet. I decided to go with a ranger half-elf named Kalythra who is much better with animals than she is with people.

And my character is named Sapphire, a sorcerer wood elf. Our group has a new member as well – we play with two members of our local writer’s group and their roommate but now the host of our writer’s group has joined us. So, there’s six of us – our DM and five players.

It was actually funny how our workshop facilitator joined. At the end of the last writer’s group meeting, he made a point to make the rest of us pause and we thought we were going to discuss the future of the workshop, considering our library’s remodel has made many more people ask to join. However, instead, he clasped his hands and pleaded to join our D&D sessions, haha! It was a great time, though, especially since he has much more experience in D&D than the rest of us.

Yes, he has more experience than us which made us realize that we’ve been playing wrong. We were adding our “attack bonus” to our damage this whole time rather than our initial rolls to see if we actually hit our target.

I mean, we’ve been doing alright, but it would have been helpful to know our attack bonuses for the previous sessions when we kept missing most of our hits, haha! The rest of the characters consisted of a human bard, a human cleric, and a dragonborn rogue, so we were a well-rounded group. The campaign is based on the one that is found in the starting kit, and we were tasked with delivering a caravan of goods to another trading post by a dwarf. Our group didn’t get too far before finding the dead horses of the dwarf and the warrior that had been escorting him.

Needless to say, we ended up getting sidetracked and ended up in a cave when a bunch of goblins attacked the group ahead of us. Now, in order to save them, we must kill the goblin in charge so the goblin holding our guy captive can be in charge. We’ll see how that goes.

With our track record, we’ll execute our plans poorly, but they’ll still work somehow. Granted, this is also just to save the warrior — I can’t quite remember what happened to the dwarf that had contracted us for this task in the first place. Our group is a bunch of misfits rather than a heroic team. The dragonborn “adopted” a goblin as a pet, our bard actually has a ukulele to play at the table, Rachel’s wood elf is constantly like, “Wtf am I doing here?” and my half-elf is more concerned with the various animals we’ve encountered than actually completing this mission. The cleric seems to somewhat have his head on straight, thank goodness, but it is quite amusing to hear him continuously preach the good word of his patron god, the God of Doctors.

We really are quite the bunch… I personally didn’t give my character a personality or backstory just yet because I want to see how she plays out in certain situations. So far, she’s a bit of a coward but can definitely fight. I had pretty good luck on my rolls. We’ll see what happens next time though.

Do you think our new characters will make it? Have you played D&D before? Let us know about them in the comments below! If you like this post, please share it around.

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